Founded on the principles of ensemble collaboration and artistic risk, AlterTheater Ensemble is also committed to new works and local artists.

AlterTheater Ensemble is committed to being a creative problem-solver for challenges in our community, and finding ways for theater to address the needs of our citizens. We wish to not just be a professional theater company, but to be a resident company of San Rafael.

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Who Are We?
We are professional theater artists who have worked at most of the theaters in the Bay Area, including American Conservatory Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Magic Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival. Many of us live in Marin, and we are delighted to bring professional, contemporary theater to downtown San Rafael.

Born and educated in New Zealand, Ann Brebner has lived in California since 1953 and has spent her life working in film or theatre.  Trained as a director at London’s prestigious Old Vic Theater, she has directed for the stage in England, New Zealand, Rhode Island, New York and the Bay Area. She is the co-founder of the Marin Shakespeare Company, directing frequently for them. Until 1981 she was the president of Brebner Agencies Inc., in San Francisco representing actors and screenwriters in the motion picture industry. She has worked as a casting director, written three screenplays, and authored a book on the skill of living a creative life in a left-brained world, Setting Free the Actor, published in 1991. More recently she has headed the drive to restore the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael as the permanent home of the California Film Institute, which produces the Mill Valley Film Festival.  For the Rafael Film Center Project she was the chair and the project manager. She has completed her second book, All My Mothers, a memoir of those who formed her life. A member of the AlterTheater Ensemble, Ann co-directed, with Frances Lee McCain, the Bay Area premiere of Sex Parasite in AlterTheater's Inaugural Season, and directed the West Coast premiere of "Cuddle Time" by Keely Madden in Smorgasbord of Shorts II, and the world premiere of Thirst by Dyke Garrison, She and her writing partner Laurel Graver adapted Anne Lamott's first novel, Hard Laughter, into a play, which premiered with AlterTheater in Spring 2007. She will play Mum in the Spring 2010 production of Owners by Caryl Churchill.

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Jeanette Harrison has lived in San Rafael for ten years. She has worked in theater administration, as a director, and as an actor on stage, on-camera, and off-camera. She has worked with Cutting Ball, Aurora Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Magic Theatre, Berkeley Rep, Theatre Rhino, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Actors Theatre of Sonoma County, Sonoma County Rep, Golden Thread Productions, Woman’s Will, Playhouse West, and Combined Art Form Entertainment (C.A.F.E.), among others. Also a voiceover actor, she recorded the voices of 2 characters in San Rafael-based Habitat Media's The Lost Art of Tea Tossing. On-camera, she recently filmed a role in the indie feature Love on the Line, starring Irish television star Bryan Murray. Jeanette is a founding member of AlterTheater Ensemble, and has appeared in Tape (Smorgasbord of Shorts I), Sex Parasite, After the Fall, Thirst, and Owners, and Intimate Apparel.

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An award-winning equity actor, Michael Ray Wisely* directed last year's critically acclaimed production of Justin Warner’s American Whupass. Some recent acting credits include Devils Disciple, The Birthday Party (Aurora Theatre), Heartbreak House (Berkeley Repertory), Glengarry Glen Ross (San Jose Stage), A Christmas Carol (Center Rep) and Dogberry in Much Ado (Marin Shakespeare). Well-known to Bay Area audiences, Michael Ray has performed locally and at other West Coast theatres for 20 years including: San Jose Repertory, Magic Theatre, San Francisco Shakes, Marin Theatre Company, Pacific Alliance and Shotgun, among others. Michael Ray has directed for the stage and film as well as guest staring in television movies, series, pilots, and as host of Home Transformations, in re-runs on the DIY network.

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AlterLab Writers

Ann Brebner See above

Rebecca S’manga Frank is a Black, White, African, Jewish, American writer and performer. She received her B.A. in Creative Writing from Mills College and sang Jazz throughout her time there. Her senior thesis was the beginning of a novel, based on her experiences in Swaziland one summer with her father. After graduating in 2009, Rebecca found herself debuting as a singer and an actor in This World in a Woman’s Hands at Shotgun Players. Since then she has performed at the Cutting Ball Theater, 6th Street Playhouse, and most recently, at the African-American Shakespeare Company as Olivia in Twelfth Night. During this time she became an Associate Artist at AlterTheater, after being in their productions of Owners and Intimate Apparel. Rebecca is currently writing her first play, combining elements of the story she started in school with her new experiences on stage.

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Poet and playwright Marisela Treviño Orta has an M.F.A. in Writing from the University of San Francisco. Marisela’s plays include: American Triage (commissioned by Marin Theatre Company, 2007 MTC Nu Werkz series, 2008 MTC workshop production); Braided Sorrow (2005 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 2006 [Inside] the Ford Summer Reading Series, 2006 Chicano/Latino Literary Prize in Drama, 2008 world premiere at Su Teatro in Denver, Col, and 2009 Pen Center USA Literary Award in Drama); Woman on Fire (2006 Primer Pasos: Un Festival de Latino Plays, 2007 full-length commission by the Latino Playwrights Initiative, 2007 Bay Area Playwrights Festival BASH, and 2008 Playwrights Foundation Rough reading series). Marisela recently concluded a three-year residency at the Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco as part of their Resident Playwrights Initiative. She was a member of Playground’s writers pool for both its 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 seasons. Currently Marisela is working on two new plays: Heart Shaped Nebula and Wolf at the Door. Her poetry has appeared in BorderSenses, Double Room, 26: A Journal of Poetry and Poetics, and Traverse.

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Dawn Scott is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work as an actor led to training at the Denver Center’s National Theater Conservatory. There she studied her craft, low-flying trapeze, and wrote a one-woman show called Red, an exploration of redemption inspired by the poetry of Mary Oliver and Ann Sexton, The Red Shoes, and Shakespeare’s Macbeth. At the Denver Center she played Beneatha in A Raisin in the Sun, the Moon in Lorca’s Blood Wedding with Berkeley’s Shotgun Players, and in April of this year, she was awarded Outstanding Achievement in a Drama by the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle for her portrayal of Esther in AlterTheater’s Intimate Apparel. She has been an ensemble member with AlterTheater since 2006, when she appeared in their award-winning After the Fall.

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Playwright Ignacio Zulueta was born in Manila, studied in Providence, and writes in Oakland. He has a B.A. in English with Honors in Playwriting from Brown University. His plays have been performed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as in New York, Minneapolis, and Kalamazoo. He’s a 2011 AlterLAB writer at AlterTheater, a three year member of Playground-SF, and part of the NewWorks Incubator at Asian-American Theatre Company. Locally, Ignacio has participated in the Tournesol Residency at Z Space for the development of Red House, winner of the 2004 William Morris Society award, and received two CA$H grants for the development and premiere of 22 Minutes Remaining and White Monkey Travels – the latter being the 2011 Antares Ensemble New Play Festival winner. His one-act, JOSE RIZAL ON ANGEL ISLAND, was published by Carayan Press in July, followed by its premiere on September 8th at Bindlestiff Studios, an epicenter for Filipino-American art in San Francisco.

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Associate Artists

Robert Ernst is an award-winning actor/playwright/director/producer who began developing and performing original solo works in 1973. He has written and produced 10 solo works during his career. He is a co-founder of Berkeley’s Blake Street Hawkeyes, a theatrical ensemble devoted to daily training, teaching, and the development of original works for performance. Bob received his B.A. in Theater and English from the University of Iowa in 1967. He went on to participate in the M.F.A. program at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry from 1967 to 1969. In 1968, he became a staff member at the University as an artist-in-residence within a new department that was created with major funding from the Rockefeller Foundation called The Center for the New Performing Arts (CNPA). While on staff, he helped co-found The Iowa Theatre Lab, a theatrical ensemble that was inspired by the concepts and methodology of The Polish Laboratory Theatre director, Jerzy Grotowsky. He remained at this position until the fall of 1972, when he moved to Berkeley to teach, act and direct at The Magic Theatre. Ernst co-founded the teaching department at the Magic (Techniques for Experimental Theatre) with artistic director John Lyon and playwright John O’Keefe. He has received Dramalogue awards for Best Director and Best Production (Tokens, 1984) and as a part of the Best Ensemble for the Eureka production of Road, 1987. On Dec. 13, 1987, he performed non-stop according to The Guinness Book rules for twenty-four hours and one minute, besting the existing record for longest play.
Ernst has written two plays (Nautilus and Smokin’) and three “pocket operas” (The Drunken Sailor, Towards Away, and The John), all of which have been produced in the Bay Area. The John was first produced as a site-specific piece by Climate Theatre in the men’s restroom of the Maritime Hall in San Francisco. The show then moved to The Intersection for the Arts in October, 2001, where it received a Dean Goodman Award in Performance, and was also mentioned in the Best Of The Year series in The Bay Guardian. He continues to develop and teach a system of ensemble improvisation that involves movement, music/rhythm and character development, from which a set performance piece is created. In his own writing, he continues to explore different mixes of the poetic, the musical, the character and the story; searching for a seamless blend.
As an actor, Ernst has appeared in film, television, and onstage, recently performing in a critically acclaimed production of People’s Temple at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and William Saroyoan’s Time Of Your Life, a tri-production sponsored by The Steppenwolf Theatre of Chicago, Seattle Repertory Theatre, and American Conservatory Theater of San Francisco, and directed by Tina Landau. His performance in the Sam Shepard play Eyes for Consuela was picked by the Bay Guardian as one of the year’s best in 1999. He understudied for Nick Nolte in Sam Shepard’s play, The Late Henry Moss, at the Theatre on the Square (Dec. 2000). Ernst has performed on every major, and most small, theater stages in the San Francisco Bay Area. Film/tv credits include Surefire, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Burglar, Metro, Escape from Alcatraz, Nash Bridges and Hill Street Blues. Ernst also writes songs for, and is a member of, the band Smooth Toad. With AlterTheater, Ernst developed Catherine's Care, nominated for a Critic's Circle Award for Best New Play.

Rebecca S’manga Frank most recently appeared onstage with AlterTheater as Mayme in "Intimate Apparrel." She is currently appearing as Olivia in African-American Shakespeare Company's Twelfth Night, directed by L. Peter Callender. She was last seen in AlterTheater's prodcution of Owners and in ..and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi at The Cutting Ball Theater. Rebecca is also a singer and a writer. She studied music and creative writing while at Mills College. Shortly after graduating in 2009, Rebecca had her theater debut in the Shotgun Players production of This World in a Woman's Hands and hasn't looked back since. She is grateful for the tremendous amount of love and opportunities she's received. 

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Matt Jones is AlterTheater Ensemble's newest associate artist. Matt made his professional debut in 2010, playing George Armstrong in AlterTheater's award-winning production of Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel. Since then, Matt has appeared in back-to-back productions with the African American Shakespeare Company, as Prince Charming in Cinderella, and Orsino in Twelfth Night. Most recently, Matt played Victor Manuel in AlterTheater's Bay Area premiere of Pulitzer Prize winner Nilo Cruz's Two Sisters and a Piano. This fall, he'll appear in TheatreWorks' world premiere of Clementine in the Lower 9. In Spring 2012, Matt will star in AlterTheater's revival of References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot by Obie-Award-winning Jose Rivera, nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay, The Motorcycle Diaries. Matt is one of only two artists nationally to win a 2011 Princess Grace Theatre Apprenticeship, for his work with AlterTheater in the 2011/2012 season.

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Will Marchetti is very excited to appear again at AlterTheater, where he is also an Assoicate Artist. It is an honor to originate a role in the first production of a new play, so he is particularly proud to be a part of The Horses. Well known to local audiences, Mr. Marchetti has acted in major roles in the Bay Area at ACT, Theatreworks, San Jose Rep, Berkeley Rep, The Magic Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Aurora Theatre, Eureka Theatre, Marin Shakespeare Company, Shotgun Players and Spreckles Performing Arts Center. Other regional theatre credits include Seattle Rep, The Huntington (Boston), the Wilma (Philadelphia), The Woolly Mammoth and Ford’s Theatre (Washington, D.C.), Kansas City Rep, New York Theatre Workshop and Yale Rep. He has been very fortunate to appear in a number of notable world premiere plays including The Shaker Chair, Sharon and Billy, Execution of Justice, The Psychic Life of Savages and many others. Will originated the “Old Man” role in Fool For Love, the Obie-award winning production written and directed by Sam Shepherd. Over the years, Will has appeared in numerous television shows and movies or industrial/commercial films shot in the Bay Area. However, theatre has been his priority. In addition to acting, Mr. Marchetti has directed a number of plays and was Artistic Director of two theatres; the Gate Playhouse and Marin Theatre Company. Will has won numerous awards for his acting over the years; several Bay Area Critics Circle Awards and several Dean Goodman Awards including a Lifetime Achievement in Theatre in 2005. In addition to his achievements as an actor, Will has been writing plays for several years. Two of his plays have been produced (Lil Darlin’/San Jose Stage and The Agreement/San Francisco). His play, The Arrival, was commissioned by Marin Theatre Company and given a staged reading in their Nu Werkz series. He has had two plays produced at 142 Throckmorton Theatre as staged readings that were very popular; Warriors and Sessions. SF Playhouse recently gave a staged reading of his play, Kinfolk, in September 2009. Will wants to give special thanks to director, Tracy Ward, and playwright, Brian Thortenson, for a great role in a wonderful play. Also, all the best to cast and crew; his partners in crime and gratitude to his family who support all his endeavors with patience and humor.

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Frances Lee McCain* graduated from Ripon College in Wisconsin with a BA in Philosophy and then studied acting for 3 years at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, England. She returned to New York where she appeared on Broadway in Woody Allen's Play it Again Sam, and off-broadway in Lanford Wilson's Lemon Sky, creating the role of Carol. She then joined the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco under Bill Ball and played a variety of roles in repertory. McCain started her career in film and television after appearing opposite Jon Voigt and Faye Dunnaway in A Steetcar Named Desire, eventually co-starring with Ronny Cox as the female lead in her own television series, Apple's Way. She remained a popular leading actor in television throughout the seventies and eighties. She played Charles Grodin's wife in Albert Brooks' debut feature film Real Life and had a major role in the blockbuster film Gremlins. She played the role of Kevin Bacon’s mother in the hit film Footloose, and appeared in the blockbusters Back to the Future, and Stand by Me. She continued to work in television after relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1980s and also appeared in Scream and Patch Adams. Throughout the years Frances has remained active in the theatre, appearing in major roles at ACT, Berkeley Rep, San Jose Rep and the Magic. Frances received a Master's Degree in Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in 2000, and continues to work in theater, especially with new work by emerging writers. In 2004 she initiated a theater project based on oral histories of the blue collar workers responsible for the building and maintaining of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico which received workshop readings at the Lensic Center for Performing Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico and most recently at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. McCain is an Associate Artist of the Z Space Studio in San Francisco, and an associate artist with AlterTheater Ensemble in San Rafael, CA.

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Will McCandless is a sound designer and audio engineer for Bay Area theatres and he is a Collective Member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, as well as an associate artist with AlterTheater.  His designs have been heard at AlterTheater, Aurora Theatre Company, Center Rep, Marin Theatre Company, Magic Theatre, ACT @ The Zeum, Golden Thread, Solano College Theatre, University of San Francisco, Climate Theater, and The San Francisco Mime Troupe. Will has been a recipient of the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award and Theatre Bay Area's Landisman Fellowship for theatrical designers and technicians.
Will is also a singer/songwriter who writes songs that, in the great tradition of American folk music, mark a time and a place.  Often his songs tell a story about the world we're living in and the people he's encountered along the way.  Will was the songwriter-in-residence at Bazaar Cafe in San Francisco last fall and can be seen playing in coffeehouses around The City.

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Dawn Scott is a proud associate artist of AlterTheater Ensemble and graduate of The National Theatre Conservatory, where she recently played Ophelia and Rosencrantz in Hamlet and Marianne in Tartuffe. With the Denver Center Theatre Company, she played Beneatha in A Raisin In The Sun and also appeared in A Prayer For Owen Meany and A Christmas Carol. Some of her favorite roles at the National Theatre Conservatory are Willie in This Property is Condemned, Polly Peachum in The Three Penny Opera, Crissy in Hair, and Olive in A Tale Told. Dawn hails from the San Francisco Bay Area where she played Marla in Beehive, Beluah in The Happy Journey, Felice in After The Fall (with AlterTheater, named the #1 theatrical event of 2006 by the North Bay Bohemian), and the Moon in Blood Wedding. Just last summer, she was one of eleven actors invited to participate in A Guthrie Experience at the Guthrie Theater. In AlterTheater's 2010/2011 Season, Dawn will be playing Esther in Intimate Apparel.

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Patricia Silver is a Charter Member of the acclaimed WORD FOR WORD PERFORMING ARTS COMPANY, with whom she’s worked for 16 years, originating roles in over a dozen of their productions; notably Olive in OLIVE KITTERIDGE by Elizabeth Strout (named Top 10 Best of 2010 by San Francisco Chronicle). From 1968 to 1982, she was a collective member of the award-winning SAN FRANCISCO MIME TROUPE, touring with them in California, the USA, Europe and Cuba. For AlterTheater, she appeared in the West Coast premiere of Summerland by Brian Thorstenson, in AlterTheater’s first production, Smorgasbord of Shorts, and in Arthur Miller’s After the Fall, named #1 on the North Bay Bohemian’s Top 10 of 2006.

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Jayne Wenger is a San Francisco based director and dramaturg whose exclusive focus is on original material. Throughout over 25 years of professional theater experience she has been dedicated to the development and direction of new plays and solo performances. She is the past Artistic Director of the Bay Area Playwrights Foundation and was the Artistic Director of Women’s Ensemble in New York. She has developed the emerging work of acclaimed playwrights nationwide and her work has been recognized with numerous awards. Upcoming dramaturgical collaborations include All At Sea, a musical written and composed by Pamela Winfrey and Christy Winn; and Lauren Yee’s Samsara, produced by EXIT Theatre. Upcoming directorial work includes A Most Notorious Women, performed by Christina Augello at EXIT Theatre, and co-direction of Men Think They Are Better Than Grass, based on the poems of W.S. Merwin with Deborah Slater Dance Theater. She has multiple ongoing projects in Alaska. In 2008 she directed Hard Laughter for AlterTheater. She is a Featured Artist at The Last Frontier Theatre Conference. She leads annual new play development and solo performance workshops in Assisi, Italy. (www.artworkshopintl.com). She is a member of the Dramatists Guild and the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas.

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As the Literary Manager at Pioneer Theatre Company in Salt Lake City (where she founded and runs the New Plays Initiative), Elizabeth Williamson is currently developing work with Brooke Berman, Kyle Jarrow, Brighde Mullins, and Bess Wohl. Other recent projects: JoAnne Akalaitis’ US Premiere production of Caryl Churchill’s Thyestes, from Seneca, at Court Theatre (as assistant director, dramaturg, and videographer), several shows with now-defunct Theatre de la Jeune Lune (most recently remounting The Deception in 2007), and the World Premiere of Mary Zimmerman’s M. Proust at Steppenwolf (as dramaturg). Williamson’s New York directing credits include the US premiere of Michel Azama's The Life and Death of Pier Paolo Pasolini (a Village Voice Choice of the week) for the Act French Festival, Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis (Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab), Peter Morris' The Second Amendment Club (AMS, then West End Theater), The Floating World (which she adapted from Chikamatsu for Lincoln Center Theater's American Living Room Festival at HERE), Genet's The Maids (FringeNYC 2001, in the US premiere of Martin Crimp's translation). Regionally, she’s worked at About Face Theatre, ACT, Aurora Theatre, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Berkeley Rep's School, Berkshire Opera, Cal Shakes, Court Theatre, Lorin Maazel’s Castleton Festival, the La Jolla Playhouse, PlayGround, Steppenwolf, and the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Upcoming: the world premiere of Desire (an opera she created with composer Leah Muir), in Berlin. Education: Bachelor's, Bennington College; Master's, Oxford University. Training: the École Jacques Lecoq & Complicite. Honors: 2007 NEA Fellowship in Literature for her translations of Michel Azama's plays; 2007 finalist for TCG’s Future Leaders Fellowship in Artistic Direction (nominated by Theatre de la Jeune Lune). She is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab.

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Lauren Yee is a 2009 MacDowell Colony fellow, a 2008/09 Dramatists Guild fellow, and a member of the 2009 Public Theater Emerging Writers Group. She has been a finalist for the Princess Grace Award, the Jerome Fellowship, the PONY Fellowship, the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award, and the Heideman Award, as well as a current nominee for the Wasserstein Prize. She has received commissions from the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the O’Neill Studio at Yale, and PlayGround. Other honors include Kumu Kahua Theatre’s Pacific Rim Prize and the Yale Playwrights Festival. She has received fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Byrdcliffe Artist Colony, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat, and the New York Mills Arts Retreat, and funding from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and Theatre Bay Area.

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Selina G Young Previous lighting designs for AlterTheater include American Whup-Ass, Owners, and The Changer. Upcoming designs include both sound and lighting for Two Sisters and a Piano, and lighting for the world premiere commission of A Man, His Wife, and His Hat by Lauren D. Yee. She has designed the lighting for many Bay Area theatre companies including: San Jose Repertory Theatre, Theatre Works, San Jose Stage Company, and Marin Theatre Company. Some of her favorite productions were the world premiere of Fear of a Brown Planet, which toured the US, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, Cowboy vs Samurai (Lighting & Sound Designer), Evita (Costume Designer) and Nine (Stage Manager). She has designed lights for many corporate, cultural and special events including NASA’s Future Forum and the Miss Chinatown USA Pagent. After working in the entertainment industry in a multitude of positions on and off stage, Ms Young has had the privilege to work with luminaries such as Eric Bogosian, Whoopi Goldberg and Patrick Stewart. She is a member of Actor’s Equity Association, IATSE Local 134 (stagehands), Theatre Bay Area, and Theatre Communications Group, and is happy to be an Associate Artist with AlterTheater Ensemble.

Current Show

Hugo E Carbajal is excited to be working with AlterTheater for the first time.  Hugo has an MFA in Physical Theatre from Naropa University, and studied at the London International School of Performing Arts.  He is an actor, director, mover, mask-maker, and teacher.  He dedicates most of his time performing for and educating young people about health with Kaiser Permanente's Educational Theatre Programs.  He moved to the Bay Area from Colorado six years ago and has had the pleasure of working with companies such as San Francisco Mime Troupe, Teatrovision,  Impact Theatre, Climate Theatre, and his most recent work was with Shadowlight Theatre in "Ghosts of The River" by Octavio Solis.

Jonathan Deline is ecstatic to be playing Golem in AlterTheater's production of A Man, His Wife, and His Hat. Most of the year he is a physical theater performer with the award winning clown troupe Pi. Jon has performed across the United States and internationally in a variety of different shows and venues with Pi. Including The Berkshire Fringe, The Boulder Fringe, The Capital Fringe, San Francisco Fringe, Teatro Zinzani, The Lone Star Circus, The Tini Tinou International Circus Festival, Full Circle Theater, Stage Werxs, The Climate Theater, and The Traveling Jewish Theater. Jon is also an accomplished actor, his most recent production was Superior Donuts with TheatreWorks where he played Kiril.

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Nakissa Etemad is a dramaturg, producer, and French translator based in San Francisco. Recent credits include Dramaturg the 2010 inaugural world premiere production of Marcus Gardley’s every tongue confess in the Kogod Cradle for Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater, and Gardley’s …and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi for Cutting Ball & Playwrights Foundation (BATCC winner, Best Production 2010). She has served as Dramaturg and Literary Manager for The Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, San Diego Rep, and San Jose Rep, where she produced the 5th Annual New America Playwrights Festival. In 19 years, Nakissa has dramaturged 75 productions and staged readings, including 15 world premiere plays and musicals. She has worked with Tom Stoppard (Every Good Boy Deserves Favor with The Philadelphia Orchestra; Indian Ink), Arthur Miller (East Coast Premiere of Resurrection Blues), Lynn Nottage (Las Meninas, NAPF), Polly Pen & Laurence Klavan (World Premiere musical Embarrassments), Katori Hall (The Mountaintop, Bay Area Playwrights Fest), and many others. Regional VP-Bay Area of LMDA, she holds an MFA in Dramaturgy from UCSD.

Jeff Garrett appeared this summer with Shakespeare Santa Cruz in Henry IV Part I, and in The Three Musketeers. NY credits include Enemies and Twelfth Night at Circle in the Square. At Williamstown Theatre, he has worked with John Guare, Nathan Lane in Moon Over Miami, with Joanne Woodward in Golden Boy, and Alec Baldwin in Study in Scarlett. TV: recurring roles on ABC’s soap opera Loving, and MTV’s Austin Stories.

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Ed Holmes has performed and taught physical theater in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past 40 years. After his 7 year hitch in the navy he attended college on the GI bill. At Laney Junior College in Oakland he fell, quite by accident, into theater. Cal State Hayward gave him a BA in theater and Mills College in Oakland gave him a MA in dance (!). Ed has performed with the Berkeley Mime Troupe, (yes, that kind of mime), I Fratelli Bologna (commedia dell’Arte), Antenna Theater (experimental/mask), the SF Opera, the Oakland Symphony and for the past 25 years with the Obie and Tony award winning San Francisco Mime Troupe,(no, not that kind of mime), as a collective member, actor and director. Ed has taught physical theater at Cal State Hayward, Mills College, American Conservatory Theater, the SF Mime Troupe summer workshops, numerous colleges and high schools and to computer animators at Sony and Dreamworks in Los Angeles. Ed has appeared in the movies The Right Stuff, Howard the Duck, Golden Gate, Monkeybone, Valley of the Hearts Delight, Vigilante Vigilante, Head Trip and on the TV series "Rainbows End", a sign language show for deaf children. For 7 years Ed toured local schools with a one man lecture demo on the History of Clowns and Mimes. In 2006, Ed, as writer/director, collaborated with Theater RAB in Freiburg Germany on a 2 person comedy about climate change, "The Tip of the Iceberg''. Every April First since 1979, Ed instigates and leads the annual St. Stupid's day parade thru the financial district/North Beach as part of his DIY religion, the First Church of the Last Laugh. His one man show about his navy days, 'Subhuman', has been performed in bars, small theaters and VFW halls all over Northern California, Northern Ohio, and recently in Kittery Maine and the Portsmith Naval Shipyard. Originally from Cleveland Ohio, Ed now lives in Berkeley California.

Norman Kern

Janice Koprowski

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The production also features original music, composed by Daniel Savio, who received his BA in Music from UC at Santa Cruz. In 2011 Daniel premiered Grandfather's Journey, the most recent of four musicals he has composed, musically directed, and performed for Oakland’s Stagebridge Senior Theatre Company. He frequently works with children and seniors performing musical theatre in Oakland and Marin, and also performs with artists and bands in the Bay Area, including Activ808 (MC Radioactive with The 808 Band). Mr. Savio was a musical collaborator in AlterTheater’s premiere of Robert Ernst’s Catherine’s Care, nominated for Best New Script by Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.

Robin Stanton recently directed the critically acclaimed Trouble in Mind at Aurora Theatre Company. Ms. Stanton’s production received multiple awards and honors among them the San Francisco Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Production and the Top Ten of 2010 from the San Francisco Bay Times. For Aurora, she also directed Betrayed, Speech & Debate, The Busy World Is Hushed and Permanent Collection, which received “Best of 2006: Top 10 Play” by the Oakland Tribune & Contra Costa Times. Other Bay Area hits include Tuesdays With Morrie at Center Rep, ART at San Francisco Playhouse, LovePlay for TheatreFirst and Ghost Festival at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ Forum.

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Emeritus

Anne Darragh is currently appearing in AlterTheater's first commissioned project, The Horses by Brian Thorstenson. She last performed with Alter in Brian Thorstenson’s Summerland, directed by Ken Sonkin. Additional Thorstenson productions include Over the Mountain directed by Raelle Myrick-Hodges at Brava and Dances for the Next Depression with Stephen Pelton Dance Theatre. Locally she has also performed with A.C.T., Aurora Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Campo Santo, Encore Theatre, Eureka Theatre (where she originated the role of Harper in Tony Kushner's Angels in America), Magic Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, PlayGround, Theatre Rhinoceros, and San Jose Repertory Theatre.

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Brian Thorstenson’s plays include:The Horses (a commissioned project for AlterTheater Ensemble, receiving its world premiere this Fall), Over the Mountain (Brava Center for Women in the Arts, Global Age Project, Bay Area Playwrights' Festival), Wakefield, or Hello, Sophia and Shadow Crossing (Central Works Theater Ensemble); Drop (AlterTheater Ensemble),Tuesday and Sugarfoot Stomp (Stephen Pelton Dance Theatre), “Heading South” (The Studio at Theater Rhinoceros The 450 Geary Theater, Berkeley Art Center, Bay Area Critic Circle Nominee), “Summerland” (2000 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 2000 Z Space Festival of New Performance, Wings Theatre Co., NYC, published in “the anthology “Plays and Playwrights 2002”.), “Half-Light Dances” (Z Magic Mondays, Playbrokers) . His radio adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here” was broadcast nationally on the Pacifica Radio Network. His poetry has appeared in Transfer, 14 Hills, 6,500 and Mary. He was an artist in residence at the Blue Mountain Center in 1999 and 2001, and the Djerassi Resident Artist’s Program in 1996. Brian is a member of the Resident Playwrights Initiative at the Playwrights Foundation, San Francisco, playwright in residence with Stephen Pelton Dance Theater and a member of the Dramatists Guild. He currently teaches at San Francisco State University and Santa Clara University. He received a B.A. in Theater from Willamette University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. He lives in San Francisco.

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Mark Routhier has had his plays developed, workshopped, and/or produced in Aspen, CO, Burlington, VT, Chicago, and San Francisco. He has directed in the Bay Area for Encore Theatre (The Bone Man of Benares, 70 Scenes of Halloween), Mettle Theatre (someguy, Drunken Grownups, Iphigenia and Other Daughters), Mostly Grounded Theatre Company (Cowboy Mouth), and American Citizens' Theatre (Exit The King). He is a recipient of the Playground Emerging Playwrights Award for his play Spotter that premiered in the Best of Playground Festival. He recently directed a workshop of Eisa Davis’s Bulrusher for SF Stage & Film. He dramaturged Lucy Thurber's Monstrosity for Encore Theatre, and Mike Geither’s Stars Fell All Night for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. He is the Literary Manager and the Sloan Initiative Program Coordinator at Magic Theatre where he has directed workshops for New Voices West, several readings for Magic Theatre's Raw Play Series, and for the NNPN Showcase. He received his MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU.

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Drew Khalouf holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the American Conservatory Theater. He currently serves on A.C.T.'s faculty, where he teaches Speech, Acting, and Shakespeare. Drew is a member of Actors' Equity, and has performed in over fifty productions with resident and touring companies on both coasts. For more information about Drew and his work, please visit drewkhalouf.com.

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